


Copper

by PaisleyWraith



Category: South Park
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-25
Updated: 2018-08-25
Packaged: 2019-07-01 20:34:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15781623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaisleyWraith/pseuds/PaisleyWraith
Summary: Kenny is six when he attends Kyle's funeral. Life continues on. Unfortunately, so does Kyle.





	Copper

Kenny McCormick is six when he first attends Kyle Broflovski’s funeral. 

He wears a black collared shirt and slacks, fitted to his small body, and stands by Stan, who’s holding Kyle’s hat: he twists the worn fabric in his hands like a wet dishtowel, pale and avoiding looking at the coffin. The hat is the only speck of color Kenny can see. Cartman is on his other side, wearing an ill-fitted jacket and trying to crack ill jokes that even he can’t laugh at. He falls silent, shoving his hands in the jacket, and says nothing in the end. 

Kenny’s mother, well-dressed in a muted blouse and a sympathetic smile, rests her manicured hand in his blond hair and tells him Kyle went to heaven. Karen sits on her mother’s hip and sucks her fingers, watching her brother with wide, soft eyes. Kevin holds Kenny’s hand without even being asked. 

The sun shines indecently, over the most boring, plain wood coffin Kenny has ever seen. Kyle was a whirlwind of ill-behaved, brilliant mind and unholy cursing. Ugly, greasy curls the color of blood on copper and eyes piercing and green as a cool, misting forest. 

He didn’t deserve a plain wood goodbye. 

Kenny discreetly scrawls the words ‘badass motherfucker’ on the side when he goes up to the casket. He likes to think Kyle would have approved. 

Kenny watched him be lowered into the ground, small hand in his older brothers and the other clutched in his mother’s skirts, pretending his lip didn’t wobble and Stan didn’t cry. 

He goes home and immediately forgets it ever happened. 

His childhood continues flying by, with Stan at his side, with Cartman, and with Kyle. 

Kyle is the wild one, always out to prove who he was to people, one of the ugliest, poorest boys in school, and one of the most brilliant kids in the town. 

Kenny believed Kyle was smarter than all of them. 

It was the tap of his pencil against the desk in school, narrowed eyes when shit went down on the playground, little hints that Kyle was always listening, always present, and always a second away from stepping in. 

Kenny could recall watching the boy, reeking of cigarettes and exhaustion, fly into a scene he had no business being in and laughing, enjoying watching Kyle dish out justice in a wild, redheaded tornado. An unstoppable force. 

And if he thought hard enough, if he had the time and desire to do so, he could summon up faint images of blood, bone, charred skin. Not just once, but scattered oddly throughout his childhood. The smell of burnt flesh, the iron tang of blood on his tongue. 

There was no reason to think about such things, however. 

No, his childhood was precious. Long summer days, playing the princess in a three-layer dress sewn by his mother, lace running over the arms and chiffon swishing around his ankles. 

Kyle takes a curved stick and a broken golf club and deems Cartman and Kenny his mortal enemies, an Elven King in a stained tshirt and an askew crown. 

Racing home to be greeted by his father, chiseling away at some wooden sculpture he later turns into feathered birds fleeing an outstretched hand. His mother baking in the kitchen. His older brother chatters away over homework as Karen and Kenny munch on cookies, sticky chocolate marring pale pink chiffon. 

Kenny goes back to school, and finds that he doesn’t ultimately mind what gender his partners are. He continues a string of consistent partners, trying desperately to retain attention of those he tells he loves. His friends are there when each one falls apart, up until the moment they no longer are. 

The four boys part in high school. 

Cartman becomes both better and worse with his own friends. 

Stan becomes both better and worse with his own friends. 

Kenny falls in love with a boy who calls Kenny ‘clingy’ and Kyle stops speaking to everyone. 

This is something Kenny cannot tolerate… the absence of color and the heat of fire. His bedspread is pale green and grey, his walls are beige, his sister begins wearing black and his boyfriend wears nothing but greyscale. Kenny wears orange, still, and misses his other half, the other end of this ugly orange rainbow they make. 

Two days before they graduate high school, Kenny stands in front of Kyle’s broken door.

Kenny is wearing pale blue, hair neat and fingernails clean. Kyle is ruffled, greasy red hair and bags under his eyes. He wrinkles his nose when Kenny offers to be there for him, setting his jaw and shaking his head. 

And Kenny genuinely offers to be there for him, asks him to come stay overnight and just relax for once, relax. Graduation was in two weeks and they were going to be fine. He and Kyle could pal around together once summer arrived, and everything was going to be fine.

Everything would be fine. 

I promise. 

(Don’t do anything stupid.) 

Kyle shuts the door in his face. 

Kenny walksup to the podium, waves at his family, applauds for his classmates. Hollers at Stan, cheers for Butters, smiles at Kyle. Afterwards, he kisses his new girlfriend on the mouth. Later she'll say something that makes Karen bristle and Kenny shrug, smiling it off. That night he goes to dinner with his family and hangs out with his friends. 

And a day later he attends Kyle Broflovski’s funeral for a second time. 

Kenny shoves his hands in a black northface jacket, Stan slumped against him in a manner that radiated grief. They share the moment, a grim understanding, Stan walks off with Wendy and Kenny stares at the plain, ugly coffin. 

For the second time, he doesn’t think Kyle deserves it. 

For the second time, his parents never show up. 

For the second time, Kenny scrawls something into the side of the wood. This time, it simply says ‘goodbye’. 

For more times than Kenny remembers, Ike stands alone, fists clenched, not shedding a tear. When the service was over, Ike runs back home, avoiding any soft words or sympathetic touches. 

Years pass and Kenny graduates university with an art degree. His father is proud and his mother cries, his sister tackles him and Kevin comes back into the state to playfully wrestle the hat away from his brother and parade around with it. 

They celebrate, and Kenny goes to bed late. He and Stan meet up, one last time, to say goodbye before Stan leaves with his girlfriend and Kenny moves to the city. The two curse out Cartman laughingly and Kyle grimly, Kenny with surprising vitriol. 

He never forgives Kyle for leaving him. 

Bright eyed, enthusiastic, and single, Kenny becomes an art teacher in the hubbub of the nation, the home to the greatest good and the most vile evil. He draws with children most mornings and teaches college students on Tuesdays and Thursdays, making money to live comfortably in his little apartment with a big kitchen and a tiny living room. 

He cooks, like his mother taught him, inviting over the rare friends and rarer date, stepping back to assess himself after he called off his own engagement last summer. His fiancé parted with as amicable words as can be expected. He hoped Kenny one day found what he’s clearly looking for.

So does Kenny, even if he has no idea what that is, and grows tired of trying to find that out.

He takes the public transit home one night, falling asleep after a day breathing in charcoal and smoothing his fingers over textured canvas. He’s woken abruptly when it comes to a screeching halt, people jerking out of their reveries to see the back of the bus begin to collide on itself. 

Kenny hears the metal screech, rushing towards the front doors when a man steps in, dressed in silver head to toe and bending the bus to his will. 

He braces himself, foot sliding to stand shoulder-width, just as the front windshield crumpled in on itself. The Elemental began bringing the bus in just as a figure flew in behind him. 

The silver villain was pushed against the wall, a struggle ensued and the newcomer stood straight in the end, shoulders broad and cape heavily swishing around his ankles. 

Kenny stared his childhood creation in the eyes. 

The hero wore pure black, a close-fitting suit with reinforced knees, elbows, a chestplate with a scarlet ‘M’ written on it, matching the mask underneath the hood. 

Kenny was pushed out of the way as others rushed off the bus, staring Mysterion in the electric-green eyes as he breathed, shallow through parted lips. 

The hero leans in, his creation, his imagination come to fruition, greets him by name. His voice is velvet and low, lips smirking and sure, head cocked and shoulders braced. 

Kenny falls in love a second time. 

Falls in love with the attitude that tells him to fuck off with a sneering grin, softened by the sparkling eyes under a mask. The being who touches Kenny’s lower back when he steps off the bus and somehow disappears, with quirked lips promising it will not be the last time Kenny sees him. 

After all, he is his creation. 

Mysterion shows up again, with a mugger in his arms like a cat with a mouse, tossing him at Kenny’s feet as the art teacher walks home at night. He stares at him, not shouting like Kenny expects, just settling him with a knowing gaze. 

Kenny is more careful, but Mysterion still finds him. 

He leaves a scarlet rose in his office one day, when Kenny jokes about him becoming a stalker. He appreciates the teasing, settling the rose in water on his kitchen table. His cat eats it. 

Mysterion walks him home, an ever-present shadow confident in his own skin, revered and known through the city. Feared, a wild horror in black and scarlet, watching over a blond boy in a muscle shirt, carrying an art portfolio and a goofy, sweet smile. 

The vigilante is always on the news, rescuing people and charging into situations like a tank. He isn’t flexible, not overly quick, but powerful and strong and quick-witted. He is by far the smartest person Kenny has ever met, seeing through plans before Kenny even wraps his mind around the situation, smirking to himself when Kenny teasingly points out his brains. 

Kenny receives a bouquet of roses the anniversary of the night he left South Park for the city. He keeps it away from his kitten. 

Mysterion shows up later that night and touches a bloom, fingers skimming over soft, smooth petals and then Kenny’s cheek, smirking lips pressed against Kenny’s and hands gripping his hips exactly like he’d always wanted. 

He stops by some nights and doesn't touch him at all, standing in a doorway and asking to see what his latest project has been. There's something almost painfully intimate in these moments as well, with the vigilante quiet for once and surveying artwork with a narrowed, thoughtful gaze. 

He tells him it's beautiful.

He tells him _he's_ beautiful. 

On one visit the hero can’t stop touching him. The cloaked man confesses that Kenny brought him back to life. When the blond laughs, Mysterion sucks a dark mark onto his collarbone and tells him he isn’t joking. 

He leaves Kenny covered in hickeys and praises that night, panting against the wall wanting more and getting nothing but mocking laughter out the door. 

He’d always been a total dick. 

Kenny begins fighting back, drawing the vigilante the next time they meet and ordering him to remain still. Focusing on the lean chest that lifted and fell, bearing his mark. The ripple of muscle under his thighs, strong and sturdy. The curve of his ass, hidden under the cape, noted by exploring artist's hands as they fall into the couch. 

Mysterion comes by so often that year, Kenny drops the jokes and tells him, at last. Whatever he’s looking for, Kenny can’t help him. He has no powers, nothing aside from an arsenal of bad jokes and a bad habit of trying to overlook everything. 

Mysterion tells him he’s already saved him. He kisses Kenny softly, on the lips and then the nose. Kenny has the strangest feeling that he shouldn’t be able to do that…something about scarlet blood soaking into a red mask, green eyes fixated and lips parted in an unspoken order to run. 

Those lips move enthusiastically now, alive and warm, as Kenny demands a real kiss. The hero always obliges, despite his teasing. 

The next time he visits, it is that day again. The day he left, the day he and Stan met secretly to talk and sigh over friends. Kenny says nothing, but pulls a paper from where it had been saved in his favorite sketchbook, next to a portrait, and slips it into Mysterion’s palm. 

Kyle’s last letter the night of graduation had exactly four words. 

‘Don’t worry. I’m fine.’ 

Stan was given the exact same note, ripping up his in a fit of anger. Kyle left town and disappeared forever, without any warning, the two boys one of the only ones who knew for certain that Kyle was not in that wooden box with the word ‘goodbye’ etched into the side. 

If he hadn’t been given that note, Kenny would never have forgiven him. 

Kyle says nothing at first, jaw set angrily. He doesn’t like being outed, having his comfortable armor punctured. Kenny is always willing to play along, pretend he doesn’t notice, but Kyle hesitates to touch him now and looks guilty after a kiss. 

As if Kenny didn’t know the moment he saw those beautiful green eyes in a mask he designed when he was a child. 

The walls fall, for both of them. Kenny’s constant unhappiness, search for joy, uncertain goals. Kyle’s self-appointed hatred, desire to protect those who didn’t want or need it, exhaustion at being the worst of everything. 

Kenny moved upward and graduated university to teach something he loved. Kyle graduated high school and moved to save people who needed him. Alone, as a young man. Starting over with just the clothes on his back and a small amount of money, only two people aside from Ike knowing he’d planned this. 

He’d been here ever since, alone until he found Kenny. 

Kenny wonders if Kyle wanted him to follow him years ago. Find him. Save him from his self-destructive ways. He doesn’t ask, he’s afraid to know that answer. 

Kyle’s figured it out. He took up a child moniker to remind him of his friends, of better days in costume and with blankets tied to be capes and kites as wings. He became powerful, clever, feared and respected. 

And with Kenny, he became loved. 

Kyle pulls off his hood, allows Kenny to help him untie the scarlet mask. His copper hair has faded to auburn, the frizz of puberty softening to curls, Kenny drops the mask to run his hands through it. 

His fingers get tangled and snarl in his hair, Kyle smacks his shoulder. 

Kenny smacks his ass. 

They relax, Kyle wearing Kenny’s clothes and the blond lying on the vigilante’s chest on the couch. He can’t keep his hands off Kyle in general, but that hair is far too tempting. He lovingly cards through it, watching Kyle’s eyes close, soft breaths between pretty lips. 

Kyle has scars. 

Nothing on his skin, who’s expanse is pale and freckled on the shoulders and arms, just slightly. His lean stomach, thighs, shapely legs are unmarred, bar any kisses and loving marks Kenny leaves behind. 

Kyle reacts to positivity like a wild animal offered a can of tuna. Cautious, suspicious, only considering once out of the spotlight. He’s so utterly self-absorbed that he insults Kenny’s ability to love him over how he views himself, which Kenny nearly ends it over. 

He does not, and Kyle learns to accept himself. 

Kenny learns to keep trying, rather than let something passively slide by. He’ll fight for this one, he deserves it. Kenny deserves this, and so does Kyle. Kyle fights for Kenny, and on Kenny's behalf, so many times that it's only fair he not give up on the boy yet.

Mysterion whips through the streets of the city at night, the lone vigilante of shadow and steel, but he comes home at the end of each run to Kenny. Sometimes the blond swears he can taste blood in Kyle’s mouth, or ash, or the souring taste of death. It never sticks, and Kyle begins to smile even without the mask, tease and taunt without the comfort of cloth over his eyes. 

Kenny sends a picture to Stan, of the two leaning on each other on the couch, and the response is almost exactly half flattening rage and exuberant joy. 

They find a bigger apartment, together, and Kyle goes to school for criminology and passes in the highest portion of his class. He and the cat get along sometimes, both love Kenny, so there’s at least an understanding there if there’s no love. 

There’s love between the two boys, a comfortable, strong bond years in the making. Kyle rages and rants and Kenny is there, not only listening but remembering. Kyle brings fire back into his bleak, empty life, and Kenny is alive again. 

They are both alive, and the anniversary of Kyle Broflovski’s death passes for the last time with the re-emergence of Kyle McCormick, a title he prefers and a re-labeling of the day. 

Kenny wears a black jacket over a collared shirt and pressed slacks, fitted to his lean body and offset by a delicate veil he wears over his hair. Stan is by his side, grinning wildly, twisting his hands in excitement as Ike pretends he isn’t smiling. Cartman refuses to forgive Kyle, which seems both promising and unlikely, Kenny’s parents are present, along with his sister and her wife, his older brother with his wife and Kenny's new niece. Kenny stops looking around at that point, too entranced by his own spouse. 

Kyle is wearing a white jacket, well-fitted, colorless. His hair is vibrant auburn and clashes horribly with the scarlet wedding colors. His eyes look just as out of place, and Kenny cannot imagine a better sight in his life. 

Kyle watches him like he’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen, something which he tells Kenny more times than he can count. Kenny’s eyes are caught on the wildfire of color, that burning fire, that tastes like sweetness and ash on his tongue. The brilliance and force of someone he missed intensely. 

Shaped lips of a vigilante murmur poetry into Kenny’s ears, and artistic hands draw patterns into the other’s skin.


End file.
